


Heaven is a First Kiss

by DinosaurTheology



Series: Brief, Brilliant Miracles [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Awkward Romance, Campfires, Conversations, F/M, First Kiss, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-30 22:51:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3954868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He smiled, straightening the scrunched places her small fingers had left in the fabric of his clothing. They had left more indelible markings, however, in the fabric of his heart."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A camp outside Din'an Hanin, The Emerald Graves, 5 Bloomingtide, 943 Dragon

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Dragon Age, but am glad to have the characters to work with. They are very inspiring.

"Do you think that she's all right?"

Cassandra offered a disgusted grunt. "You have asked me that six times. Today."

Blackwall's considerable eyebrows knit together. "This is a dangerous world we live in, and dangerous times. It's not an unreasonable question."

"Once was in the wake of a hill giant's attack. We were covered head to toe in gore and Varric had not yet disentangled himself from the beast's intestines."

The dwarf chuckled and shook droplets of water from his hair, still damp from a dip beneath the Silver Falls. "That's going to go down in my memoirs as one of the least pleasant things I've ever experienced. Quite an achievement, considering I'm from Kirkwall."

"You were standing right beneath him. What did you expect to happen?"

"Well, not you vaulting over me like a silver thunderbolt and opening his belly up like that. Andraste's ovaries, woman, isn't that armor you lug around heavy?"

Mischa Trevelyan--an Inquisitor, Enchanter and general font of wisdom--spoke up. "It is. I tried a suit of it once, since I didn't trust my barriers then quite as much as Madame de Fer trusts hers, and walking was more of a trial than fighting."

Blackwall smiled, deep in his thicket of beard. "You'd get used to it. We were all miserable the first time we strapped on a battlemaster or vanguard's full kit."

"Truly." Cassandra nodded. "I could not raise my sword and shield more than a dozen times, the first month of my training. It was humiliating."

"I understand that," Trevelyan said, "and I imagine that I would have eventually gotten used to the weight. I can't imagine ever being able to stand all that chafing, though, in the most inconvenient places."

"The judicious use of padding, my love. It keeps me from building any more scars and calluses than I already have."

Blackwall sighed. "I sweat a lot, so on a really hot day I'll get the blood rubbed out of my arse no matter how much padding I put on."

Varric winced. "I'm glad that I just wear this coat and a glorious patch of chest hair. Aveline used to say that the chafing and weight were the Maker's way of keeping a warrior humble."

Cassandra snorted. "Was she mad or merely stupid?"

"Neither. Our glorious Guard Captain was just very, very Fereldan."

All three of Varric's companions nodded their understanding. 

"So, you all do think that everything is all right, back at Skyhold?"

Cassandra picked up a stick, its tip already blackened, and stirred their campfire. "Do you think that my opinion of their situation has changed in the five minutes since the last time you ask?"

"I suppose not..."

"Then assume that I still think that everything is as all right as it can be."

"She's got a good answer there." Varric rubbed his chin. "What's got you so exercised about what Ruffles is up to, anyway?"

"We were going to have a long conversation when I got home; we had a short one before I left, but it was rather intense."

"Most excellent." Varric grinned. "Things have progressed that far between you, then?"

Blackwall stiffened. "I don't know what you mean."

Mischa reached over to pat his knee. "I think he's implying that you and Josie have taken the plunge, old boy."

Cassandra patted the Inquisitor's knee. "Maker's breath, darling, you are even less adept at innuendo and sublety than I am. Were sniping and politics not covered much, at the Ostwick Circle?"

He squeezed her hand. "No, we mostly just covered the four schools of magic. I was best at spirit, as you know. I think that Montsimmard offered a major in politics and a minor in sniping."

Varric cackled. "Now that I can believe." He turned to Blackwall. "Now, I'm not implying anything untoward so don't get your beard in a bunch there big man, but I heard that Avvar scout we just brought aboard, Suda the Water Fox, whispering to Flissa that you two looked pretty darn cozy in your forge."

"You heard?"

"Eh, I heard, someone I paid to hear things heard... it's all the same thing."

"Whoever told you must have been mistaken, then. You're wise enough to not trust second or third hand information, messere."

"Oh my, messere." He slapped his knee. "Tethras, you've touched a nerve, just like always. So, why don't you just go ahead and tell Ruffles how you feel about her?"

Blackwall didn't respond, so Varric kept on talking. No point, after all, in breaking with tradition at this late date. "So I guess, when I add the romance between a dashing hero and a swooning damsel to my newest epic, I'll have to make it up as I go. I mean, Cassandra and the Inquisitor there don't really fit the bill." He tapped his foot. "Maybe Sparkler and Tiny."

As Blackwall's blush deepened towards purple, Cassandra raised her hand. "Enough, Varric."

"But Seeker..."

The Inquisitor spoke up in a tone that, from him, brooked no rebuttal. "She's right, my friend. Not all of us wear our hearts on our sleeves." He waggled his fingers and two small glyphs formed, on his upper arm and Cassandra's, in the shape of green, glowing hearts. Her own face reddened and she pressed her forehead against his shoulder, hiding a smile. "You don't like it when folks press you about Bianca, after all."

"I guess... but bottling all this up just isn't healthy. Someone's going to explode."

Blackwall had finally regained enough of his composure to respond. "We'll deal with it before then, I assure you."

Varric sighed. "No matter how you deal with it, though, it's probably going to fall to me to clean it up. So it went it Kirkwall, so it goes in Skyhold."


	2. Leliana's Rookery, Skyhold, 6 Bloomingtide, 943 Dragon

"Where do you think they are, right now?"

"They are probably exploring the ancient halls of the Emerald Knights inside Din'an Hanin, I would imagine." A wicked smile curled across Leliana's lips. "Unless they've been eaten by a hill giant or great bear, that is."

"Leliana!" Josephine's hand flew to cover her mouth. "What would make you say such a thing?"

She stretched to lounge on the dark, velvet divan. It proved a constrast, as did the lush curves of her figure and smooth, clean lines of her face, with the rookery's dark corners and spiderwebs, the ravens' harsh croaking. "Because you have asked me more than a dozen times a day since they left, Josie. I have reassured you each of those times--well, at least most of them. It is not likely that my opinion has changed, no?"

"I suppose that it is not."

"Then assume, my darling, that Warden Blackwall is alive, well and thinking as kindly of you as you are of him."

Her large, inky eyes grew even wider. "Oh, no. It's not just him that I want to have not been eaten by some horrible beast. You can't think that, Leliana."

She squeezed her friend's hand. The birds cackled, overhead. It seemed more mocking than usual, somehow. "I understand--it would be especially foolish if you didn't care about Inquisitor Trevelyan's fate, after all. It's just that you and Blackwall had such a fascinating conversation in his forge before they left for the Graves."

Josephine sighed. "It seems like my private comings and goings with Warden Blackwall have become common knowledge in the Inquisition. I hate to be fodder for all the gossips."

"I wouldn't say that you're fodder for all the gossips, my love."

"I heard two scullery maids, a group of soldiers, Breaker Thrann and a delegation of Avvar from Red Bear Hold talking about it within the last week." She raised a slim eyebrow. "If this was not bad enough I am also pretty certain that Sera has overcome her discomfort of Maryden enough to begin working on a ballad about the whole affair."

"Sera and our illustrious bard talk a very great deal and do not say much of anything. It would be easy to remedy this state of affairs."

"Precious Leliana, I am always afraid for people when you say things like that." Josie giggled. "It always seems to end with a knife buried to the hilt between someone's shoulder-blades."

"It has proven, in the past, an expedient method of bringing certain situations under control."

"Not in this case, I hope."

"No, not in this case."

"Good." She cast a sidelong glance at her friend. "Might I venture to ask why?"

Leliana regarded her with eyes pale as the sun breaking over Judicael's Crossing. "Maryden is a fine chanteuse--although certainly no bard--and can handle both the classical ouvre of Orlesian court songs and her own compositions reasonably adroitly. Sera is... an interesting creature." She picked a well loved lute up off the floor and let her fingers wander its strings, teasing mellow notes out of them. "Did I tell you that she was involved in my history with Ravin?"

Josie's deep, dark eyes grew so wide that they almost swallowed her face. "Ravin Brosca, the Hero of Ferelden?"

Her notes took on the shape of Leliana's own "Brosca's Lament," a lyric blunt and without artifice as the duster it was written to commemorate. "The same. She was just a little rat, less than ten years old. We rescued her from the abominations that had overrun the orphanage in the Denerim Alienage--such a tiny thing, cowering in an armoire while ghouls gnawed on the torn, bloody little corpses of her fellows, outside!"

Josie shuddered. "I knew there was something dark in her her past, but..."

"There was much darkness and more to go around during the Blight, indeed, all over the world but especially in Ferelden. She became enamored of us and clung to the part for the rest of the time that we were in Denerim, proving most useful while we dealt with the Alienage plague and Tevinter slavers. She was invaluable, in fact, in leading Ogren, Zevran and myself to Ravin when he was captured in the bowels of Fort Drakon."

"A shadow, flickering at the edges of great events." Josephing laid a musing finger against her lips. "It seems like Sera was involved with the Friends of Red Jenny even before she was old enough to know what such things even were."

"I remember a fiery little demon--proud and furious. Ravin laughed, ruffled her hair, and called her an honorary Carta rogue when we sprang him from Fort Drakon. That's when he gave her the box."

"The box?"

"Just a painted, wooded box with glass gems glued on--the kind of thing a tradesman's wife might stow her jewelry in. It was probably the most valuable thing that Sera had ever been given in her life. I wish we could have done more for her, given her more. Ravin, Alistair and I lingered and watched her play with it for hours, rolling it over and over in her fingers and watching sunlight flash on the glass beads. Morrigan called us easily amused fools with weak minds." She chuckled and twisted a strand of coppery hair in her fingers. "Now she's a doting mother to Ravin's son and I do not even know where in Thedas he is or if he's even alive."

Josephine did not know how to respond to the raw pain she felt radiating in Leliana's voice, so she left it alone, drew close to her friend and let her head rest on her shoulder. "Does Sera remember you, recognize you at all?"

Leliana stroked Josie's long, glossy, dark curls. "I think that I saw some glimmer of recognition in her eyes when she first came, leading a pack wain full of breeches for some reason. I asked if we'd met before and all she said, when she heard my accent, was that she knew 'hundreds of posh cunts from Val Royeaux, two feet up their own arses about poncy shoes,' and she offered to steal my breeches, too, if I wasn't careful."

"Well," Josephine said, "that is at least more genial than the first greeting I got from her."

"It was the best either of us could hope for, and a far sight better at least than an arrow in the eye." She idly fingered the chords to "Sera Was Never," Maryden's song about the boisterous young archer. "We have gathered an odd little family to ourselves here, at the crown of the world."

"Indeed." Josie relaxed against her old friend's lithe, well muscled frame. "I'm glad to be here with you, though. With you all. Even if things have gone to all the hells and I am worried out of my mind all the time."

Leliana pressed a kiss against Josie's temple, and let her fingers pick the spidery, minor sharps and sevenths of the "Ballad of Ayesleigh." "Do not be so distressed, my sweet. Blackwall will be returning soon and you will not have to be so worried about him."

Josephine sighed. "I know, Leliana, I know. It's just that then I'll have something else entirely to be worried about."


	3. The Office of Josephine Montilyet, Skyhold, 12 Justinian, 943 Dragon

Josephine scrawled words she could not remember seconds after setting them to parchment in a shaking hand on a document that she hoped fervently was not too important. This was ridiculous! She had not been this exercised since she and Yvette were girls, waiting until dawn to catch the silhouette of their father against the rising sun as he returned from a long, grueling trading expedition from Quarinus or from training manouvers with the freely organized company of the Antiva City Merchants' Guild Condotieri. He was a lieutenant in their ranks and, in spite of his small stature and stooped shoulders looked dashing in their blue ribbons and House Montilyet livery. The sight of him, ahorse and flourishing a rapier, set both girls squealing with delight and his sons dueling with whatever sticks they could find lying around the yard.

The man who'd just slipped through her doorway, quieter than he'd any right to be, was neither short nor stoop shouldered. Josie felt her heart hammering in her throat as he crossed the office's long, purple rug--why in the name of Queen Asha had she picked such an inconveniently long office, anyway? Wasn't it rude to make dignitaries walk so far? He had something in his hand, something bright, colorful...

He held out a bunch of bright, golden flowers to her. The bells burst like fire against the lush, silky darkness of their stalks. "Prophet's Laurel in full bloom, I think. Fairbanks and his lady, Clara, said that the people of the Graves like to give this to one another for occasions that are... you know. Occasional."

"So... occasional occasions?"

"Those are the best kind, I've heard."

She took them and looked up into his eyes--how had they come to stand so close together? "They're beautiful, Blackwall" She held them to her nose. "They smell like the silverspray embrium that maidens wear in their hair, during springtime, back home." She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. "Not many things remind me of home. I love Skyhold and everyone in the Inquisition, I really do, but I miss Antiva City and my famiiy so much sometimes that my heart aches to bursting. Grazie mille."

"It's just a small thing."

"'Upon a pebble all the world may turn, yea upon a grain of dust,'" Josephine quoted. She thought that Leliana would approve of her using "Brosca's Lament." "Where did you find them? Prophet's Laurel in this stage of growth is difficult to come across." 

"I picked it up from the side gardens in Villa Maurel, after we'd defeated the false champion Auguste Duhaime."

"Duhaime..." Josephine closed her eyes and shuddered. "We have heard of him, and his brother Concorde, even in Antiva City. They are vicious thugs involved with the worst kinds of things--lyrium trading, selling slaves to Tevinter... what were they doing in the Dales?"

Blackwall grunted. "The worst kinds of things and more, under the guidance of a masked ne'er-do-well adventurer named Maliphant. We don't know his true name and he wasn't in good enough shape after Varric's exploding arrow caught him in the face to do much checking."

Josie blanched. "He and Bianca do have the most terrible fun, don't they?"

"I try to keep from coming between a man and the woman he loves... er, crossbow he loves, I suppose."

She set the bright, lush flowers in a jar of water, on her desk, and wrapped his large, callused hands in her delicate fingers. "I worried myself sick about you, while you were gone. All of you, that is. The Graves are dangerous. They've been the burial ground for so many, from the elves of Arlathan on. The Dalish call them Fen'Harel's hunting ground. The whole world has, come to think of it. He stalks a wide circle."

He let his rough thumb trace circles on her soft skin, like he had several times before. "I thought of you often, too, m'lady.

"Often, too, or too often?"

"I..."

She giggled. "I'm teasing you, ser. It warmed me, here at the cold crest of the world, to think that I was on someone's mind, so far away, under the green leaves."

"Well, I wasn't always thinking of you..."

"No?" She raised an eyebrow and laid a hand to her breast in mock outrage. "And what could have caused your chivalry to laspe in so monstrous a manner, Warden Blackwall?"

He chuckled. "Helping to untie Varric from that hill giant's small bowel took all my concentration, and we were all fully focused on her alone when that Greater Mistral came sweeping down from the mountains in a flurry of ice cold wind."

Josephine grew as pallid as a woman with olive skin could. "Please... just... er, forget that I asked anything about your chivalry lapsing. Yes. That's a good idea. We'll just pretend it never did. You're as noble a chevalier as Aveline herself, yes."

"I'm sorry, Josie." He leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers. "I was teasing you, too. Or trying to, at least. My humor can be a bit rough. I'm used to spending most of my time alone... or among the wretched scum and villains we take for the Wardens. I shouldn't have been so harsh with you."

"No, ser, no. You weren't too rough with me--you've never been too rough with me, nothing ever but the model of chivalrous solicitude. I've got three brothers at home--older and younger--and I have to deal with Sera here. I'm not a porcelain doll, I will not break. Even if violence and the descriptions thereof bother me I can't run and hide from them in my father's robes like I did when I was a little girl." She smirked, wore the expression shockingly well. "I would be a poor ambassador from that position, don't you agree?"

"My lady, I do not think there is any position from which you would make a poor ambassador, a poor anything at all you set your heart to."

Impulse seized her and in a brief, wild moment of irresponsibility she wrapped her fingers in the front of his dark blue doublet, rose up on the toes of her soft, leather shoes and let her lips brush against his. His beard was soft, even downy near them, not rough like she'd expected. She settled back on her heels, eyes large and luminous in the early afternoon sunlight. They were, he reflected, as bright as Eluvia hanging over Nettle Pass on a moonless night in the Graves. The trip had made him poetic; maybe she just did it. He wrapped his fingers over hers, still entangled in the indigo dyed Dales loden wool he wore.

"I'm so sorry, ser," she whispered. "My apologies--all apologies. I forget myself, where we are--who we are. I can't let it happen again. I won't."

"No..." He let a hand travel across her face to wind in the long, dark curls hanging loose there like clusters of grapes. "We must never forget." She leaned into his palm, eyes slipping shut. The huskiness of his voice, its rawness, wove a spell on air that was suddenly heavy and summery, in spite of their height above the world. "We are flesh, blood and bone."

She turned her face to murmur an echo of these four words, an echo of her own so many weeks ago, into his rough palm.

A clattering through the office door shattered their enchantment. "Whoa..." It was Varric. "I seem to have come at exactly the wrong moment. Or, the writer in me says, maybe the right one."

"Er, yes." Josephine stood up straight and pulled her hair into a quick, sloppy bun. "What can I do for you, Messere Tethras?"

"Nothing much, Ruffles... just checking up on my business arrangements, here and abroad."

She cast a helpless glance at Blackwall. He smiled, straightening the scrunched places her small fingers had left in the fabric of his clothing. They had left more indelible markings, however, in the fabric of his heart.


End file.
